


One Foot in the Fairytale

by Platform 13 (freshneverfrozen)



Category: Far Cry: New Dawn
Genre: A little salty you saved him again, Heavy Petting, Mild Angst and Dramatic Prose, Thomas Rush is okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 02:21:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17879276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshneverfrozen/pseuds/Platform%2013
Summary: Rush saved you. You'll return the favor over and over until he understands why.Or, that one where I *fixed it, thank you very much Ubisoft.





	One Foot in the Fairytale

Your hand in his that very first time feels cataclysmic - it’s the sudden shift of your world on its axis and the reorientation of purpose and all that you’ve known. Thomas Rush pulls you to your feet before he knows your name and retrofits a lifetime of selfishness and fear into belief. Each time he pulls you from the flames, you understand the mythology of hope a little more, until, one day, you start reaching back for him. 

Those are the reasons why, when they take him from you, when they take the others, you show them what it feels like to lose purpose and hope - you shake their belief in their twins with bloodied hands and gunfire. 

And Rush… 

When Rush looks at you, his chin lifting heavy from his chest, he looks surprised to see you standing above him. They had shoved him to his knees and spread him like an X until he was unable to fight his own fight, had tied his hands, and beat him raw and open. They hurt him thinking that you and he were somehow the same - that you were noble and civil and _restrained_. When there’s blood on the ground and two broken windows, you reach for Rush and for a moment, for a fleeting breath in the grand scheme of suns and moons, he leans into your hands. 

He hadn’t believed _you_. 

You untie him and the entire way back to Prosperity, neither of you speaks. Rush and the others tend their wounds as you walk on numb feet toward the showers. There’s a heat between your shoulder blades as the distance grows and you know he’s watching. He watches until you disappear. 

You feel tired and dry-eyed, unable to cry as you pass the day alone. For the first time, the years you’ve spent with Rush make the hours you spend without him harder. Because he doesn’t understand you the way you understand him. You settle into the room Kim Rye has assigned to you and you close the door and turn off the lamp so that the space beneath the door shows dark to anyone who passes by; the moonlight shining in through the open window is enough for you to bandage your busted hands. 

It’s well past dark, perhaps creeping into the early hours of the morning when a soft knock at your door draws your head from your pillow. You rarely sleep since the train incident, so it’s little inconvenience for you to pad across the cool wooden floor and pause to listen, your hand over the knob. It’s him - you know it with the same certainty with which you know your name. He’s come to question you why you came for him _again and again_ , why you are so much like and so different from him when he hasn’t asked you to be, why you keep throwing yourself into the line of fire for him instead of with him. You have all those answers, but whether or not you give them to him tonight is a different matter. 

_Because, because, because_ , you’ll say instead, _because you would for me._

The door knob is cool to the touch when you find the nerve to turn it, opening three inches of space so that you can half-meet Rush’s gaze in the dim light. 

“Did I wake you?” he asks quietly. 

You shake your head and step aside to let him in. Rush never hesitates, not with you, and he steps inside your room, asking without asking - that’s how the pair of you are, symbiotic. Until today, you remind yourself, until Rush had somehow stopped understanding. 

“You look better,” you tell him, though you suspect the shadows are granting him no small amount of grace. His steps are heavy, slow and thudding as he goes to the patchwork chair in the corner and folds down onto it. 

“Don’t quite feel it,” he shrugs and the ink-wings on his neck seem to flutter, “Not yet anyway.” 

“You’ll get there, Rush, you always do -” 

“Yeah, well maybe I wasn’t supposed to this time, Captain.” 

The sharpness in his voice jars you, somehow like cold fingers across your face. 

“ - did you ever think of that?” he asks. “Even once?” 

It’s anger then, a bitterness that he can’t reconcile with the idea that you had surprised him. Rush’s hands flex over the arms of the chair. He wants to stand but he’s too tired and ends up sagging further into the cushions. His voice is softer when he speaks again, his face turned out toward the window. 

“What would these people have done if we’d both died today?” 

“Rush, I -” 

But you don’t have this answer, not one you can tell him that he won’t be ashamed to hear. Because the truth is that these people are no different from any of the others these past years and none of the others have ever made a damn to you, not like they do to him. Their happiness, their lives, are a byproduct of the reason you fight. 

“You’re angry with me,” you say instead, just so you can hear him admit it. 

“You’re goddamn right I am.” 

This time, the frustration overcomes bruised muscles and Rush gets to his feet, straining beneath borrowed clothes. He’s always the bellow to your flame, stoking the fire and fanning the heat, but tonight the sharp edges you had heard about from his youth are showing, gleaming in the moonlight with hard eyes and bared teeth. 

“Stop,” he punctuates the words so that they bite, “being reckless, Captain.” 

“Stop making me then!” you snap, returning fire with hands against his chest. Volatile like a star or a gas planet, you’ve never been able to temper your words like Rush can. 

“I never asked -” 

“You fucking didn’t have to!” 

You shove without meaning to, that fire burning blue, but Rush takes the hit and holds his ground. His eyes narrow, so dark in the shadows that the blue looks inky black. Quieter now that his breath is on your cheeks, you say, “You’ll never have to.” 

Whatever gives you away - maybe it’s your voice, maybe a tremble in your fingers you can’t stop - brings Rush’s mouth to a thin line, one turned down sharply at the corners. He doesn’t understand. 

Right up until the moment he _does_. 

His palm finds your arm, warm against the skin, and slides down, his fingers catching around your wrist. He says your name, not Captain, not Cap, but your name and you feel it in his chest as he repeats it. He’s inched closer, closed the distance, and his heartbeat runs away against yours. 

You’ve never surrendered a fight. Since the bombs fell, you’ve fought until your bones were broken and you couldn’t get rid of the smell of blood. Even before Rush, you never let anyone know when you were beat. Why, then, your next words come so easy, you’ll never know. 

Turning your hand in his grip, you catch his fingers. 

“Rush...this is a bad world to love somebody in.” 

The frown that knots his features hurts you; it cuts and each moment is salt in the wound. His free hand finds the back of your neck and there’s a weakness in his fingers you haven’t known before when he draws you closer to press his forehead to yours. 

“Is that why you do it?” he asks. “Fight this fight?” 

_For me_ , he’s asking. 

“I’m not playing hero,” you say, but you nod, and his lips part as your breath dances past. 

It’s like standing in the sun too long - you’ll have burns where he’s touched soon enough. This isn’t him pulling you to your feet; he’s trying to keep you upright and the mutual effort of it charges the air. 

When he kisses you, his lips opening yours, it’s a salve on open wounds. There’s a gentleness behind his tongue that you don’t expect from someone who burns as hotly as Rush does and when your mouth opens to him, you learn what surrender sounds like - it’s a groan from his belly, hungry and weak and tired, and it draws you closer to him. The hand on your wrist sets you free, traveling down to the small of your back where it presses and curves your body into his. 

He’s hard against the front of your pants and you wonder how long he’d been that way. The way he swallows you, drinks in all you give him, tells you that it must have happened before. Rush pulls you into him and holds you there, the roughness of his beard leaving your jaw and throat raw as he kisses, tattooing you with words against your skin. 

Like the sun, you think, or the bonfires from your youth, he’s warm and gentle against your face, and when he nips your ear and whispers your name, you press harder against him, until your name comes again, rougher, _breaking_ like water over stone. 

“It’s gotten harder,” Rush mutters, catching your face between his palms, “asking you to fix these problems.” He takes a breath and you swallow it down. “For years, it feels like, it’s been a damn trial every time I send you out.” 

“I don’t mind,” your lips press against one palm, “I never have.” 

Rush grins - you feel it, taste it. 

“That’s the problem.” 

He guides you back, your steps awkward until the backs of your thighs bump the bed, and then he’s pressing you down, bracing himself over you and leaving you to reach for him. But his hands chase yours away and snare in your hair as his lips find the column of your throat. You’ll have marks there come morning, but you’ll wear them proudly because they’re his. Above you, you feel his weight threaten to give and one hand comes to rest at the back of his head. It calms him, slows him, and when you draw him up, he finds your lips again. With a sigh and a shiver, he shifts himself off of you, towards the edge of the bed, and draws you into his chest. 

“If I lose you to this fight...” his words taper off, lost in the darkness, the thought not worth finishing. 

You smile and the world feels somehow lighter around you. 

“Once upon a time, there were happy endings,” you say and his arm tightens around your shoulders. 

“Didn’t anybody tell you?” He presses a kiss to the top of your head, sighing when your palm slides beneath his shirt to rest over his heart. “That’s what we’re doing here.” 

Somewhere along the way, someone had mentioned it - you don’t remember when or how you started believing it, but it’s Rush’s doing, and your heart is easier for it. 

  



End file.
